


Nasty Habits

by aphrodite_mine



Category: The Inside (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Yuletide 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:25:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love, lust, nasty habits / take us very far underground – Grand Ole Party</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nasty Habits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prozacpark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prozacpark/gifts).



Agent Locke’s apartment has two locks: one in the knob that works with a key and one chain lock that any robber worth his salt could undo in the space of seconds. It isn’t in the nicest of neighborhoods, her apartment. It’s the kind of place where people wouldn’t notice her coming or going, but the management handle upkeep well. There is always someone on the grounds, trimming or painting or repairing, even though nothing really looks old enough or broken enough to repair.

Bureaucracy doesn’t move in real time, so they don’t have her car out of impound. No one, aside from Paul, looks askance when Web offers Rebecca a ride home from the hospital. Agent Love offers a brief smile and his hand, heavy on her shoulder. “Feel better,” he says, moving out of the room first and breaking silence the simultaneously. Rebecca sighs, lifts her fingers to wave goodbye to him, to Mel at his heels.

Paul’s presence in the room is unnerving. He is literally leafing through a plant, sent from some unknown presence. Rebecca imagines his fingerprints on the petals. “You’ll take a few days off, at least, this time?” he says, glancing up.

Rebecca presses her lips together and blinks. Web clears his throat, re-appears from whatever corner he had temporarily dissolved into. “We’ll certainly discuss that.” A sprained ankle and a few bruises are just like anything else, Rebecca thinks. Nothing much of a hindrance where work is concerned.

“Tell Karen hello for me,” she says, unofficially dismissing Paul. She’s tired. Tired of pretending.

\--

He leaves her to get out of the car at her own pace, preferring to take the plant and her bag of dirty clothes from the hospital up with him to her apartment. Web flips through his keys until he finds hers, sliding it into the door knob, thinking again that she should get a dead bolt. It only makes sense. He lets the door click behind him, likes that it doesn’t slam, and places the plant on the service bar between Rebecca’s kitchen and dining area. The clothes, he takes straight to her bathroom and dumps in the hamper she keeps there, already half full of folded work clothes. He smiles at her over-exuberance.

A moment later, he hears her on the building stairs, the clunking of the hospital-rented crutches. Web doesn’t suppose that Rebecca really needs them; that she’s gotten by on far worse than a sprained ankle, but then he rationalizes, and reminds himself that she should get better when she can. As she reaches her door, Web opens it for her, watching, cool, as she rearranges herself to cross the threshold. She’s pale, but she looks good in Mel’s FBI scrubs. It’s almost as if she’s gotten used to wearing them, used to getting hurt, getting rescued – sort of – getting healed.

“The nurse said you could take a pill if you were in pain,” Web says, watching her still. Rebecca settles into a chair, laying the crutches on the floor next to her. He makes sure she’s settled, then turns to lock the door, first the knob, then the slide.

“I’m not in pain,” Rebecca says, simply. She doesn’t cross her arms or legs when sitting, just looks up at him, her face open.

\--

Neither of them cares to take special precautions for Rebecca’s leg. As such, it starts in the chair but doesn’t stay there long. He kisses her upturned face, feeling her body shake slightly then stop, pressing his fingers around her right arm. “Get up,” he says.

She does, of course, wincing as she puts weight on the newly bandaged ankle, but she doesn’t lean into him for support. She makes the step on her own, that, and each one after. He doesn’t need to stop and look at her work wall, but he does anyway, makes her bite her lip on the pain. “It was good prep work, Rebecca, but you should have seen it. _Him_ ,” Web corrects himself, glancing at his subordinate, wondering how long it took her to learn to keep emotions from her face. How many games her captor played with her before she finally learned to play one back.

“Of course, we have him now.” Rebecca’s voice is flat, but Web senses pride. Perhaps it is his own, and if so, it’s due. She did well.

The pictures crinkle behind her shoulders as he backs her against the wall, but she doesn’t complain. If anything, Web thinks he sees the trace of a smile on her lips while her hands go to work, freeing his shirt from belted trousers, undoing his tie, and unbuttoning forever. She moves quickly from one task to the next, skillful fingers at one duty, then finished. The only clothes he actually takes off are his jacket and belt; the rest he saves. The scrubs are entirely too easy. They’ll stay mostly dressed, just disheveled, until later.

One of his hands works its way through her hair, knotting itself in place at the base of her skull, jerking her head back, exposing her throat. He sucks and licks, tasting her, smelling the dust of Ronald’s hermitage, smelling the too-clean scent of the hospital, and underneath it, the plain, identity-less scent of Rebecca. He presses against her, the pulls back, sliding his free hand between them, undoing the laces of her scrubs and sliding his hand between the waistband and her skin.

She doesn’t make a sound, just opens her mouth to breathe faster as he slides two fingers, three, inside of her, fucking her while he stares into the eyes of the girls taped on her wall.

\--

Every night he locks the door to his office and checks it, twice, before moving among them and leaving the unit to take the elevator to his car. Nothing registers on his face, from the moment he shuts down the desk computer, to when he flips off the lights, to turning the keys in the lock. He faces the main room as he presses the handle, once, again, and doesn’t blink. She doesn’t watch him, ever, but she knows he does it. They ride the elevator together, usually. He holds the door until it dings in warning.


End file.
